Member Spotlight Archives >>   Lessons from the Road   Brenda Conway didn’t start traveling until later in her life.   “I was a school teacher,” she said, “and I wanted to see the places I’d taught about for all those years.” This love for learning has taken Brenda, and husband Clair, throughout Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.   “I find there is a value to traveling now as opposed to when I was younger,” Conway says. “I look at things from a different perspective. I understand the events which have shaped the world. I know that the people and history of a place are more important than its entertainment.   Brenda claims her greatest learning didn’t come from a guide book but from observing the authentic, everyday aspects of people’s lives.   “My greatest experience in Vietnam wasn’t a temple,” she says. “It was Miss Vee’s cooking class.” Brenda, and her fellow travelers, joined their instructor on a trip to the market to shop for ingredients. Afterward, they returned to her restaurant for a step-by-step tutorial of Vietnamese cooking: how to dress a plate, dinner conversation and the importance of culinary balance.   “Miss Vee did more than tell us how to prepare our food,” Brenda said. “She taught us why the Vietnamese always eat in a circle, why they speak of the “we” and not the “I” and how certain foods are joined together for balance—a sort of culinary feng shui.   “On our first trip to Shanghai, we visited an afterschool program,” she recalls. “It was amazing to see these young children learning calligraphy, violin and ballroom dancing.”

The former teacher said the experience revealed something about the value system of the Chinese.   “Many of these kids were very poor. They lived in hovels but they had on crisp school uniforms,” she says. “Families do everything they can to give their kids a good education, and you could see the kids understood its importance. They were very focused and determined to do things properly.”   While our differences may be obvious in such experiences, Brenda claims that traveling has also convinced her of how similar people throughout the world really are.   “People are people no matter where you go,” she says. “We all have some things in common. We have hope and kindness and we can communicate—a smile is the same anywhere you go.”   In her travels, Conway has gained a greater understanding of the world we live in and a little about herself as well.   “Comparison teaches us about others but it also teaches us who we are,” she says. “Travel can reveal, and even change, our beliefs, our interests and even our direction in life.”   A lesson well learned.